Background:
Mental disorders often impair functioning in several areas of life and lead to unhappiness and suffering that may affect health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Satisfaction with participation is an indicator of HRQoL, and its measurement by patients reflects the impact of disease on their social, emotional and professional life. The Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS(r)) offers an item bank based on item response theory. This system provides efficient, reliable and valid self-report instruments of satisfaction with participation, a measure that is both scarce and useful in the assessment of mental disorder outcomes.
Objective:
To cross-culturally adapt the PROMIS(r) satisfaction with participation item bank to Portuguese.
Methods:
Cross-cultural adaptation followed the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy (FACIT) multilingual translation method and was achieved through steps of forward and backward translations, review by bilingual experts (one of them a native of Portugal) and pretesting in a group of 11 adult native Brazilians. Instrument adaptation followed a universal approach to translation, with harmonization across languages.
Results:
Equivalence of meaning was achieved. As two of the 26 translated items, which asked about leisure and social activities, were not understood by less educated participants, an explanation in parentheses was added to each item, and the problem was solved. All items were appropriate and did not cause embarrassment to the participants.
Conclusions:
The satisfaction with participation item bank is culturally and linguistically suitable to be used in Brazil. After the pretest is applied in Portugal and in other Portuguese-speaking countries, the same instrument will be ready to be used in multinational studies.
Mental disorders; outcome assessment; social participation; translation; item response theory